File photo of fuel tanks at the edge of a Military airstrip on Diego Garcia, largest island in the Chagos archipelago. (Reuters) / Reuters

The UK government continues to delay the publication of flight records which could prove the British overseas territory of Diego Garcia was used by the CIA for “torture flights,” a human rights NGO has said.

Reprieve, which
advocates for prisoners’ human rights in Guantanamo and
elsewhere, said the UK government admitted in 2008 that Diego
Garcia, a British territory in the Indian Ocean, was used by two
CIA rendition jets carrying prisoners in 2002.

With the release of the Senate torture report in December, it was
revealed that the CIA flew captives to secret prisons, known as
black sites, across the globe as part of its rendition program.

Although it has been known for years the CIA has used the island
for rendition, the British government has failed to publish
flight records which could provide clues into how the site was
used and who was taken there, Reprieve argues.

“It is now over seven years since the UK government was
forced to admit that CIA torture flights were allowed to use the
British territory of Diego Garcia, yet we still seem no closer to
the publication of flight records which could provide crucial
evidence of what went on,” said Donald Campbell, from
Reprieve.

In July 2014, the government claimed the flight records had
suffered “water damage.”

Then-Foreign Office Minister Mark Simmonds later told the House
of Commons that officials would be “assessing their
suitability for publication.” However, the government has
failed to make a further statement.

“We need to see full publication of those records without
delay, in order to reassure the public that Britain is not
involved in the cover-up of torture evidence,” Campbell
said.

A former senior official in the administration of George W. Bush
recently admitted that interrogations took place at a CIA black
site on the island.

Lawrence Wilkerson, a former chief of staff for US Secretary of
State Colin Powell, said Diego Garcia hosted “a transit site
where people were temporarily housed, let us say, and
interrogated from time to time.”

Wilkerson, who worked for Powell from 2002-05, told Vice News in
January: “You might have a case where you simply go in and
use a facility at Diego Garcia for a month, or two weeks, or
whatever, and you do your nefarious activities there.”